On our family's first visit to the town, and namesake peak of Mount Shasta, California in 1997, we stayed with some good friends and family from the Bay Area, in a funky apartment over a gun shop. As I've mentioned recently, we've been coming back regularly every summer (since 2003) and staying in the second home that our friends bought in Mount Shasta. We just returned 39 hours ago from a great eight-day stay, replete with much hiking. One outing was to Heart Lake, above Castle Lake, the latter a popular camping, fishing and hiking spot for Mount Shasta newbies. Which we were when we first hiked there in '97. The trail can get crowded on weekends, but it's a real wilderness experience, only a few miles from town, and the Central Mount Shasta exit off I-5. Kids can deal fine: the roundtrip is 2.2 miles, and an approximately 850-foot elevation gain, some moderately steep stretches but nothing too arduous. On the way up, there are some great rocks to lunch upon. (No, I don't eat rocks, not lately. I sit on them to eat. Sometimes.) Take care to follow the cairns near the saddle, staying right, or you'll drift off on another trail, toward Little Castle Lake.
Using iPhoto on my iMac G5 for the first time, and converting the downloaded digicam shots I took on our recent trip into jpg files and then into blog-friendly image code via my wonderful Photobucket account, I've got some homegrown pixs to share here for the first time. These are in contrast to the pix taken by others that I've accessed (for non-commercial purposes only) using the Google Image search function, and have then converted to images in previous posts here on travel, and other topics.
(PART OF) CASTLE LAKE, AND BLACK BUTTE, FROM TRAIL TO HEART LAKE, SISKIYOU COUNTY, CA., SEPT. 5, 05.
APPROACHING HEART LAKE, SEPT. 5, 05:
MT. SHASTA, SEEN FROM HEART LAKE, SEPT. 5, 05. Shasta's summit is 14,162 feet.
And yes, Heart Lake, though small, is shaped like a heart, almost perfectly.
TECHNORATI TAGS: MOUNT SHASTA, HEART LAKE, CASTLE LAKE, iPHOTO, iMAC
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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 8, 2005 09:58 AM